Meconomy

Building a Life That Suits You

Today, the future of work and life is invented over peanut snacks and sliced peppers while electro music is playing in the background. Colored Post-its are attached to huge whiteboards, charming little models are built, and activities like crossing a river as a group or climbing a wall using hand-made rope ladders are performed to foster self-awareness. Welcome to Palomar5, a camp in which highly talented young people – i.e. Digital Natives – are supposed to explore their generation’s ideas of work and identity.

On the spacious terrace on the Spree riverside in Berlin, hardly anything suggests that the sponsor Deutsche Telekom AG has invested a considerable amount of money to be able to impress Angela Merkel with the groundbreaking insights of the young elite at the next IT summit. The camp participants are sitting around on blankets and cushions, drinking cheap supermarket water from plastic bottles, cutting, gluing, and chatting. You can hear the muffled sound of a subwoofer, and somewhere in the background a swing is hanging from the ceiling. The whole scenario rather resembles a summer camp than a state-of-the-art think tank. However, first impressions can be misleading.

All of the participants are bi- or trilingual designers, communication scientists, IT experts, or prospective managers in their twenties – in short: people who definitely belong to the professional elite of tomorrow. Here at Palomar5, their first task is to playfully define what they imagine their future private and professional lives will look like. In the next step, they are supposed to develop products that enable companies to meet the demands of Digital Natives. After all, the workplaces of the future will have little in common with ours.

To these young people, it goes without saying that they can work everywhere and that they don’t have to be at the office every day. Collaborative software solutions allow them to permanently keep in touch with their colleagues, the bliss of permanent employment is a thing of the past, and future projects will be realized within a lose network of companies, subcontractors, freelancers, and experts. Consequently, it won’t matter anymore who is a freelancer and who is a permanent employee. They have entirely new ways of thinking and very concrete questions: “Why can’t you have three work contracts at once?” asks Stefan Liske, co-organizer of Palomar5. Or: “Assuming that, in the future, we will have chips implanted beneath our skin that transmit our biological data to a server, would employers be allowed to evaluate this data to find out when we’re most productive?”

These questions might suggest that Palomar5 is basically a big science-fiction playground – and that’s what it is actually supposed to be to a certain extent. However, HR managers and executives should pay close attention to this generation’s ideas about their future jobs and lives. Companies that do not address these issues will realize that high-potential candidates will prefer to join rival companies. At the same time, questions like these contribute to the emergence of a new market with products and services that are tailored to the needs of young professionals.

So here they are: Smart people in their mid-twenties delving into concepts like “The Next Generation of Identity,” “Knowledge Cultivation,” or “Collaborative Value Creation.” While all of this might sound like a satire on futurologists, it is highly relevant to these people’s everyday lives: “Our biographies are fragmented,” says Chinese-born Xiwen in perfect English. “We have one personality on Facebook, one on Xing, one on our blog, and one in the real world. We need new tools to manage all these facets of our lives.” The other participants are nodding portentously – obviously, these problems can be considered cross-cultural today.

I have been invited today to give a speech on my new book. For this purpose, I’m establishing a Skype connection with mobile knowledge workers in New York, who are giving the virtual visitors from Berlin an enthusiastic welcome. While the managers of some major corporations would probably be quite impressed by something like this, the young camp participants are taking it as a matter of course, reacting in an interested, yet nonchalant manner. What I, as a 39-year-old, would definitely consider modern and kind of high-tech is no more than everyday life to the twentysomethings around me. Cheap bottled water and peanut snacks aside, they indeed seem to have the potential to discuss the camp’s official topics – such as “Business Ecosystems,” “Leadership Models,” and “Knowledge Management” – and to come up with new solutions. René Obermann, CEO of Deutsche Telekom AG, will have a lot to tell to Angela Merkel.

Wasting Away in Middle Management

The reality of work and life is not only changing for people in their mid-twenties and job starters. Even well-established executives and entrepreneurs start to feel uneasy about the ever-growing pace of the change. On a sunny morning, 15 successful, middle-aged businessmen are sitting in the meeting room of a design hotel in Hamburg, worried about their future, their careers, and the meaning of life. They work in different sectors: Some are bankers, some are marketing managers, and some are controllers. There is a scientist, a freelance architect, and a director of commercials among them. What all of them share is that vague feeling of discontent, that gnawing anxiety about the future. They are not afraid of failure or unemployment, but of leading an average life full of mediocrity and boredom – the idea of “that was basically it, there’s not much more to come.” What they fear is that all the exciting stuff out there is happening without them.

What I am describing here is not a motivation seminar but a self-organized meeting of friends and acquaintances. Some of them have known each other since their childhood, others have recently joined them because they found the idea appealing. But what idea? One of the participants brings it to the point: “All of us are good at what we’re doing. We make good money and we’ve achieved something, but if we don’t watch out, we will be stuck on this level for the rest of our lives. We’re wasting away in middle management.” And this is not the way it is supposed to be – not in the Meconomy with its promise of self-fulfillment and jobs that we are burning to do. That’s why the 15 businessmen developed a schedule that mixes self-discovery with professional training and business start-up coaching. Today is their first meeting.

In a quick round of introductions, the participants tell each others what they do and what motivates them. It soon becomes obvious that all of them attach importance to their jobs – still, the soft factors are all the more important. One of them tells the group about his last world trip that he took a sabbatical for. Another one shows pictures of him skiing and sailing. The message is clear: There is more to my existence than my job. The participants tell each other about their plans and dreams, about things that they still want to experience or achieve. The 15 men indeed form a representative cross-section of the German working population in their mid-thirties. All of them are ready – if not even dying – to reinvent themselves.

That’s why they want to find out now how others made it. They picked a city – Hamburg – and simply called some of the most interesting and intelligent achievers, asking them: “What about this: We come over and you can give us the inside story behind closed doors. Is that a deal?”

You wouldn’t believe this kind of strategy would be successful, but it actually worked. Within the next three days, they will talk to 20 CEOs, chief editors, company founders, and start-up businesses. During long, intensive, and confidential interviews, they will hear about what went wrong in their interview partners’ careers and businesses, what they would do the same way again and what not, what impact their jobs have on their private lives, and what goals they have.

The list of interview partners is impressive: start-up businesses, entrepreneurs, and exciting personalities. From Gabriele Fischer, Editor-in-chief of the German business magazine brand eins, to Mark Korzillies, founder of the restaurant chain Vapiano. From Thorsten Becker, managing director of the Hamburg-based HR consulting company Management Angels, to Arndt Roller, CEO of Parship. The list also includes potential sponsors, such as Jens Müffelmann, who coordinates the investments of Germany’s Axel Springer publishing house in technology ventures, and Christian Nagel, co-founder and managing partner of the venture capital company Earlybird.

I had the opportunity to attend the interviews – as a participant and contributor – and I was indeed impressed with the list of prominent interview partners that had been compiled by a group of no-name individuals. However, what I found even more impressive was the likeable enthusiasm with which they questioned the experienced entrepreneurs. Here, a group of young managers really wanted to know how to start your own business, how to present ideas, how to create a financing plan, and, ultimately, what might go wrong in all of this. I took extensive notes and would summarize the most important insights as follows:

1. Usually, much more goes wrong than you would expect as an outsider. I can’t give you any details in this respect as I agreed to treat all the information confidentially. However, you wouldn’t believe how dramatic the mistakes, mishaps, and errors were that many business founders made and got through. Just because they are successful today, this doesn’t mean they have always known everything and done everything right. Sometimes they were simply unlucky. Of course, when talking to journalists, they always tell the success stories.

2. Sometimes you have to let go of your own idea to make it work. Today, Mark Korzillius owns but a small share in Vapiano – although he is the one who came up with the idea for this globally successful restaurant chain. He says that he is satisfied to see his concept grow.

3. Sometimes you have to stick to your idea against all odds to make it work. When you listen to Gabriele Fischer talking about the difficult beginnings of brand eins, you ask yourself: Why on earth did she do that to herself and her team? Because she knew that they would triumph in the end? This is easy to say in retrospect…

4. You might have to challenge your business model to keep it alive. The MediaLab, a subsidiary of the German Madsack publishing group, recently invented the first newspapers that exclusively contain user-generated content – which means that all articles are written by laypersons and not by professional journalists. Please note: We are talking about a major German publishing house here that actually makes money by selling classic newspapers. Is this insane? Or a bold strategy that counters industry trends? Probably, it’s a little bit of both…

5. After all, no one knows in advance what will work. Earlybird doesn’t know which of the start-up businesses they finance will make it. Madsack doesn’t know if their investments in the Internet radio platform www.radio.de will be profitable. Parship doesn’t know if people will spend 30 Euros a month on dating during the financial crisis. The planners of Hamburg’s large-scale architectural project HafenCity don’t know if they will create a vibrant district or a soulless concrete jungle. The trick is to stop calculating, deliberating, and forecasting at some point and to start doing things. No one knows what the future holds, but all of us can take a chance.

This might seem more difficult during times of crisis. To many people, however, these are perfect times to get started: When the economy is down, resources and rents are cheap, manpower is available, and you have time to prepare for the take-off of your business after the crisis.

The Time to Do What You Love Is Now

“There is no more reason today to do stuff that you hate,” says the young American entrepreneur Gary Vaynerchuk, who gave up managing a wine wholesale company with a revenue of millions in order to realize his dream: He recently became the world’s most successful wine blogger. He broadcasts his daily show via the Internet and rejects offers of TV stations. In this way, Vaynerchuk became one of the pioneers of the Meconomy: “Ask yourself: What do I want to do every day for the rest of my life? Do that! I promise you can monetize that shit.”

This message catches on with the target group of young, well-trained employees who have been disappointed one time too many – by their bosses, by their investment advisors, or by politicians. We lost money in the bank crash of 2008, and some of us even lost their jobs in the economic crisis. We are flexible, motivated, and well-trained – but that doesn’t really help us during the downturn. Many of us who still have our jobs do them in a rather disenchanted way and without too much loyalty. We know that we might get the sack once management decides to change its business strategy. As we don’t trust our bosses, more and more of us prefer to become our own bosses and start our own businesses.

On average, the number of independent professionals is increasing by five percent every year in Germany. In 1992, there were 514,000 of them; in 2007, that figure had already almost doubled to 954,000. Between 2006 and 2007 alone, the number of physicians and pharmacists increased by 7.6 percent, the number of lawyers, tax accountants, and auditors grew by 5.3 percent, the number of people working in technical and scientific professions (such as architects, engineers, and biologists) rose by 7 percent, and the number of people working in the cultural sector (such as journalists, actors, directors, and writers) increased by more than 6 percent.

Particularly the Creative Class gains more and more importance: According to the Federal Ministry of Economics and Technology, the cultural and creative industries grew in 2008 – despite the general economic trend. This was largely due to the economic input of small businesses. With 2.6 percent, the cultural and creative industries contributed more to the GDP than, e.g., the chemical industry (2.1 percent).

This trend towards more entrepreneurial spirit, courage, personal responsibility, creativity, and eagerness to experiment – i.e. towards the Meconomy – certainly isn’t very typical of Germany and has various structural, technological, psychological, and historical reasons. In the following, we will dip into the most important ones, looking at the core theses of two prominent observers of this development: Jeff Jarvis, communications expert and professor of journalism, and Seth Godin, entrepreneur, author, and marketing guru.

Learning from Google

Many things suggest that the world as we know it is undergoing a profound change: Time-tested business models are crumbling. Hierarchies are increasingly being replaced by collaborative, network-like structures. Communication within companies and within society isn’t entirely based on the top-down approach anymore – however, creating but a few bottom-up channels is not enough: In the long run, an irregular tangle of senders and receivers will replace the old media. People no longer want to perceive themselves as hollow consumers or marketing targets. Instead, they want to exert influence on products and innovations, as well as on the designs and functions of the things and tools that surround us.

Jeff Jarvis is known for his particularly merciless and prophetic analyses of this change. In the past, the 55-year-old worked as a media manager and created the famous US magazine Entertainment Weekly. Later on, he developed an online resource website and became a university professor. Jarvis lectures on the changing media landscape, proclaiming that the death of the newspaper is at hand, and writes highly successful blogs and books such as the bestseller “What Would Google Do?.”

In this book, he describes what would happen if other industries operated according to the rules of the search engine giant. To Jarvis, the above-described changes can be summarized in a short guiding principle that he gives the (rather immodest) name “Jarvis’ First Law”: “Give the people control, and we will use it. Don’t, and you will lose us.” What does this mean in the Meconomy context?

The first thing you need is what Jarvis calls “Googlejuice”: Ensure that you are searchable via Google (or other search engines). At a minimum, you should put your curriculum vitae, a portfolio of your previous work, and information on your network of friends and colleagues online. Besides, your website shouldn’t rank fifth or tenth in the search results. If you google for “Markus Albers,” the first website you will find is mine – because I fought for it. And here is how you do it: Create links – both online and in the real world. The more things/products/contents you create and the more producers you are linked to, the more links will lead others to you, the easier it is to find you, and the more jobs/contacts/knowledge you will get.

Moreover, you need to be honest and authentic – or, as Google puts it in its corporate slogan: “Don’t be evil.” The more rapidly online interaction between market participants gains momentum, the less it pays off to act in an immoral, uncooperative, and exploitative way, as the cost of such actions increasingly outweighs the benefits. Jarvis: “When people can talk with, about, and around you, screwing them is no longer a valid business strategy.”

You have to position yourself in a distinct way. “Our online shadows become our identities,” says Jarvis. “To stand out from our crowd, we need distinct identities.” You have to become your own brand, an expert, someone who represents something. For this purpose, you don’t have to become a quantum physicist or an opera star. Being known for less grandiose things or being an expert within a small group of people works just as well: Just think of someone who always repairs the heaters of his neighbors, ex-teachers who show others how to work computers, people offering pottery courses or drum lessons, mothers arranging playgroups, or someone who is really good at organizing parties – all of them are experts. However, you should carefully consider whether you want to be known for your professional qualifications or for your passions. You might be able to separate both online identities from each other: professional banker on Xing, rock guitarist on MySpace. Happy people manage to combine both – which brings us to the last point.

Do things. A clerk who meticulously files documents won’t become famous for that – neither will it add to his profile as an expert or to a portfolio that distinguishes him from others. We don’t know which documents Franz Kafka worked on as an insurance clerk, but we know his novels, short stories, and letters. Fortunately, standard processes are increasingly being automated or outsourced today. This doesn’t mean that all of us should become novelists now. However, it is certainly legitimate to ask: What achievements or what “body of work” would you like to look back on at the end of your life? “The internet doesn’t make us more creative,” writes Jarvis. “Instead, it enables what we create to be seen, heard, and used. It enables every creator to find a public, the public he or she merits.” Before we move on to this last aspect, I want to make clear that “creating” does not exclusively refer to arts, music, or dancing. Setting up a business, delivering engineering services, or imparting knowledge to others can be highly creative processes. It doesn’t matter how “valuable” a product or an idea is – what matters is that you create it.

Become the Leader of Your Own Tribe

Seth Godin is an advocate of this new way of thinking. The marketing expert, entrepreneur, and book author belongs to the few who are able to pinpoint what exactly is different about the new economic order that I refer to as the Meconomy in this book. In 2009, Godin coined the term “tribes” to describe the networks of relations between individuals. Tribes have always existed: The inhabitants of a small town formed a tribe, same as, e.g., athletes in Thuringia or the members of the Hamburg branch of the Social Democratic Party of Germany. In these old tribes, geography still played a crucial role.

The Internet has eliminated these geographic barriers. Today, an unlimited number of tribes exist parallel to each other, small and big ones, horizontal and vertical ones. All of us are members of many more tribes than in the past – tribes that we form with those who we work, travel, or shop with, who we discuss politics with, who we show our photos to, who like the same music, or who share cooking recipes with us. We have an ever-growing number of tools available to organize membership in these tribes and to connect with other members: Facebook and Xing, Twitter and Basecamp, e-mails and websites.

According to Godin’s theory, all of these tribes are looking for leaders – and you could be one of those leaders. The best thing, however, would be to create your own tribe. Yet what purpose, topic, or product would that tribe be about? In order to answer this question, you will have to do some serious soul-searching, asking yourself: What is it that I really want? What am I passionate about? What am I dying to do? The answer should become the topic of your tribe.

–> Your interest in chocolate makes you want to know everything about it and to share your knowledge with others? The same applies to Holger in’t Veld. That’s why he established his “Schokoladen” shop in Berlin where he sells high-quality cocoa products. He also opened a café, produces his own chocolate, and wrote a book called “Schokoladenrebellen” (“Chocolate Rebels”). In’t Veld used to work as a music journalist – today, he has gathered a tribe of chocolate connoisseurs around him. This illustrates that the tribal approach certainly isn’t restricted to online business models. Still, by definition, they seem to work better, as is shown in the following case.

–> Your granny is really great at crocheting and you have some wacky designs that the old lady could crochet? This is what Manfred Schmidt earns his living with, selling potholders with skulls on them as well as highly original crocheted caps, t-shirts, and egg cosies via his website “Oma Schmidts Masche.” Schmidt used to be an architect. Today, he has created his own tribe with products that are sold online throughout Germany, if not even worldwide. With a small retail store and, thus, a very limited target group, this probably wouldn’t have been possible.

–> Andreas Stammnitz’s true passion has always been to teach others. Although he was very successful in his job as head of marketing for a big German publishing house, he just couldn’t let go of the idea of setting up his own business in the field of adult education. Today, Stammnitz has cut back to part-time and is currently setting up an online community that offers coaching and professional development services.

These are just three examples of Seth Godin’s main thesis that the new economic order rewards passion: “Tribes are about faith – about belief in an idea and in a community,” writes the US author. “Do you believe in what you do? Every day? It turns out that belief happens to be a brilliant strategy. Many people are starting to realize that they work a lot and that working on stuff they believe in (and making things happen) is much more satisfying than just getting a paycheck and waiting to get fired (or die).”

Godin argues that life is too short to hate what you do every day – too short to produce mediocre stuff. Almost everything that is considered standard, ordinary, or average today is perceived as being mediocre – i.e. boring – by people: “The end result of this is that many people (many really good people) spend all day trying to defend what they do, trying to sell what they’ve always sold, and trying to prevent their organizations from being devoured by the forces of the new. It must be wearing them out. Defending mediocrity is exhausting,” says Godin. Those who work for Opel, Karstadt, or some daily paper will know what he means.

Yet what if you fear that your passion, hobby, or field of interest is too exotic? Or too ordinary? In short: What happens if you’re afraid to exchange the security of mediocrity with the adventure of the unknown? The first thing you should do is to consider the example of Andreas Stammnitz: Try to gradually set up your new business, website, store, or tribe alongside your job. You will find out when the time is right to abandon the old and to focus entirely on the new. However, you should be ready to deal with failure constructively and to learn from it: “Understand how powerful it is not to have to be right,” says John Naisbitt – renowned futurologist, author of the world bestseller “Megatrends,” and advisor to several US presidents – in his recent book “Mindset”: “Nothing ventured, nothing gained. If you fear to be wrong, you will not be able to exploit the opportunities this evolutionary period is offering.”

Second, consider the “1,000 True Fans” theory that was developed by Kevin Kelly, Internet legend and co-founder of Wired Magazine. The theory states that normally 1,000 true fans are enough to enable an artist or an owner of a small store to make a living. According to Kelly, a true fan will bring three friends with him to a concert. He will buy the expensive hardcover edition of a book instead of only clicking through the author’s website. He will drive across the city to buy a specific brand of chocolate at a specific store. And, most notably, he will support the tribe and spread the word, telling others about how great it is to be a fan of – you!

Now, does this mean that all of us should become small-scale entrepreneurs, bloggers, artists, or chocolate retailers? No. That’s exactly what it doesn’t mean. Organizations are still important: They increase efficiency and make it possible to scale processes and reduce complexity. We need organizations. They “give us the ability to create complex products,” writes Godin. “They provide the muscle and consistency necessary to get things to market and to back them up. Most important, organizations have the scale to care for large tribes.” However, organizations don’t have to be factories – this is how Godin refers to organizations in which your boss tells you what to do – anymore. Routine tasks, standardized processes, and the manufacturing of mass products only slow modern companies down and can easily be outsourced. “The organizations of the future are filled with smart, fast, flexible people on a mission,” says Godin.

Tribes might as well emerge within organizations – e.g., around someone who had an innovative idea, someone who inspires her colleagues with her enthusiasm, someone who isn’t just punching the time clock, or someone who doesn’t only think about what her supervisors expect her to do, but what goals they have in mind and how they are trying to achieve them. Thus, finding out what your heart is set on, telling others about it, and gathering fans around you to pursue a common goal works just as well in a company, i.e. at your workplace. Actually, you have to do this in order not to die of boredom or to avoid being dismissed due to lack of creativity.

Not only has it become dramatically easier today to create this sort of life for yourself – it is also much more likely that this strategy will bring you success and satisfaction.

Or not? To get to a definitive answer in this respect, it might be helpful to find out more about the things that make us happy. Experts have noticed time and again that we have surprisingly vague and unrealistic ideas about what “happiness” actually is and how we can achieve it. The next chapter attempts to answer these questions in the Meconomy context.